Fall. Back to school. Back to scouring the web for a cheaper deal on your textbooks. Most likely, Amazon was always one of the first places you would check for lower priced textbooks -- and to check you needed lots of arcane information like ISBN numbers or the full book title with the right edition.

Apple rules the tablet roost with the iPad, but that isn’t stopping others from trying to shake its golden eggs from the nest. Case in point: HP is running a promotion this weekend only for its webOS-driven TouchPad, making this slick competitor a better value than the iPad -- if you act fast.

Mac veterans remember well the dark days before Apple’s own software storefront -- a time when locating and buying software for their computer was akin to a nightmarish Easter egg hunt. Thankfully, Apple’s Mac App Store has made those memories a thing of the past, and even Amazon has jumped into the fray with its own Mac-friendly download store. But which should you use?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. It's only the latter part of July, and the last thing you probably want to be thinking about is school being back in session. However, it'll be here before you know it, and one way you can be prepared is by looking into renting e-books, or rather e-textbooks. Heck, you might even save some money along the way!

We know, you’re chomping at the bit to get your hands on the official Steve Jobs biography coming March 6, 2012, but first the publisher and the author have to sort out exactly what the thing will be called -- and sometimes, the simplest title is the best one.

Okay, maybe buying a $40,000 guitar was a bad idea. But it was so shiny, and BB King picked it up once, and...well, it was a bad idea. Try this next time: Create a calendar in iCal. When you see something you want to drop your credit card number on, add it to the calendar and set an alert for 30 days in the future. If, in 30 days, you still can’t live without that gold-plated Han Solo action figure, it’s probably destiny.

Sure, you could get an iPhone app like Grocery Gadget ($3.99) that lets you share a unified grocery list with your family members, and that could help you remember to schlep to the store for toilet paper, diapers, Doritos, or other can’t-live-without-it household staples. Or you could use Amazon.com’s brilliant Subscribe feature to keep yourself from running out in the first place -- and save money while you’re at it.

There’s no doubt that Apple’s latest MacBook Air is a hot item with consumers, and rumors have recently pointed to a refresh coming down the pipeline any day now. A new report claims that inventory is constrained at major retailers, which is usually a good sign that a new model is on the way.

Federal Judge Phyllis Hamilton today commented that she will probably rule against Apple in its lawsuit to prevent Amazon from using the name "Appstore" to promote its line of Android-based applications. Apple had initially sued the online retailer over use of the name in March of this year.

As the June 30 deadline approaches for developers to get on board with Apple’s new subscription policies, Hulu appears to be the first to deal with the problem in the simplest of ways -- by simply removing a link to their website from the iOS app.